FORGOTTEN CITY
forgotten city
I worked with my classmate Imogen Davies on this project. My main inspiration is the game, Genshin Impact. I mainly worked on the assets while my teammate worked on effects
Programs: Maya, Photoshop, Substance Painter, Unreal Engine
Responsible for: Texturing and materials, lighting, and some modeling
Breakdown
brainstorming and concept
I had an idea of making a floating island inspired by the game Genshin Impact. Heavily inspired by start screen, I started making some photo-bashing concept art of the environment. Using the concepts I made, I planned out an environment in Photoshop.
Gathering References
Next, me and my teammate started gathering references for the lighting and the objects in the environment. Agreeing that we both wanted a purple sunset look, we gathered relevant images.
MOdeling and uving
The next step was modeling. Since there was very little time, I modeled some assets and acquired some from Megascans and turbquid. I UVed the assets and made sure it was ready to go to the next step: texturing. For the columns, I also wanted them to have the same UV (procedural) despite the level of detail. I UVed the columns so that I could texture the high-poly column and it would transfer well to the low-poly columns in the distance.
Texturing, look development and lighting
Before I hop onto Substance Painter, I went on Photoshop and made some tileable texture samples that I could use for texturing in Substance Painter; this included cliff, dirt, and grass samples. I also maps for the oak leaves on Photoshop. Since the samples are made, I proceeded to go to Substance Painter to texture all the assets. Using the maps I made, the next step was plugging them into the shaders in Unreal Engine. Here are detailed screenshots of the nodes and the maps I used for each asset. Simultaneously, I worked on the lighting and the assembly of the environment; please find those below the material node screencaptures.
clouds
The next challenge was how to cover the environment with moving clouds. Working around the limits of the cloud tool in Unreal Engine, I worked on a moving cloud shader that wouldn't be too heavy. I started out by making 3 tileable cloud alphas and adding them together in the material editor with a panner node. This created the effect of moving clouds.
After that, my teammate Imogen Davies added the effects like the water and fireflies. She also added some more dynamic effects into the materials I made (like pulsing). All in all, this project was very fun and definitely a learning curve. I have searched so much information, tutorials, and documents about unreal in order to complete this project. After tackling many challenges head-on, this project has definitely increased my confidence using Unreal Engine.